Biography: Sandra Oh

Sandra Oh (born July 20, 1971) is a Canadian actress. Oh has twice won a Genie Award and a Screen Actors Guild award, once won a Golden Globe Award and four-times been nominated for an Emmy Award. She is primarily known to American audiences for her role as Dr. Cristina Yang in the ABC series Grey's Anatomy. She also played notable roles in the feature films Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways, and had a supporting role on the HBO original series Arli$$. In 2005, Oh made People magazine's list of the 50 Most Beautiful People.

Biography

Early life

Oh was born in Nepean, Ontario, to middle-class Korean immigrant parents Joon-Soo (John) and Young-Nam, who had come to Canada in the early 1960s. Her father is a businessman and her mother a biochemist. ^{Oh grew up living on Camwood Crescent in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, Ontario, where she began acting and dancing ballet at an early age. At the age of 10, she played The Wizard of Woe in a class musical, The Canada Goose.}

Later, at Sir Robert Borden High School, she founded the Environmental club BASE (Borden Active Students for the Environment), leading a campaign against the use of styrofoam cups. While at Sir Robert Borden High School she was Student Council President. While in high school, she played the flute and continued both her ballet training and acting studies; however, she knew that she "was not good enough to be a professional dancer" ^{and eventually focused solely on acting. This interest led her to take drama classes, act in school plays, and join the drama club where she took part in the Canadian Improv Games and Skit Row High, a comedy group. Against her parents' advice, she rejected a four-year journalism scholarship to Carleton University to study drama at the prestigious National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, paying her own way. She told her parents that she would try acting for a few years, and if that failed, return to school. Ironically, while studying at the National Theatre School, she portrayed a waitress in the made-for-television film, School's Out, in which her co-worker, Caitlin Ryan (Stacie Mistysyn) also considers turning down her acceptance into Carelton University's journalism programme.}

Soon after graduating from the National Theatre School in 1993, she starred in a London, Ontario stage production of David Mamet's Oleanna. Around the same time, she won roles in biographical TV films of two significant female Chinese-Canadians: as Vancouver author Evelyn Lau in The Diary of Evelyn Lau (Oh won the role over more than 1,000 others who auditioned); and as Adrienne Clarkson in a CBC biopic of Clarkson's life.

Career

Oh became even more widely known in Canada for her lead performance in the Canadian film Double Happiness, for which she won the Genie Award for Best Actress. She then went on to star in the 1997 international feature hit film Bean playing the supporting role of Bernice, the art gallery P.R. manager. Her other Canadian films include Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity and Last Night, for which she again won a Best Actress Genie.

Oh is most familiar to American audiences from her roles in the films Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways. She considers Sideways to be one of the two best movies she has made, along with Evelyn Lau. ^{In the less well-known Dancing at the Blue Iguana, she played a poetry-writing stripper, performed several nude dance routines and received the movie's best reviews. On American television, she is renowned for her current role in the hit ABC medical series Grey's Anatomy, for which she has won both a 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series and a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series. In July 2008, she received her fourth consecutive Emmy nomination for her work on the series.}

Oh received critical acclaim for her six seasons as Rita Wu on the HBO series Arli$$. She received an NAACP Image Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and a Cable Ace award for Best Actress in a Comedy for her work on Arli$$. In theatre, Oh has also starred in the world premieres of Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters at the La Jolla Playhouse and Diana Son's Stop Kiss at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre in New York City. She made several guest appearances on the series Popular (1999) playing a humanities teacher. She has also guest starred in the television series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Judging Amy, American Dragon: Jake Long, Six Feet Under, and Odd Job Jack.

In 2006, she costarred in the film The Night Listener as "Anna," alongside Robin Williams and Toni Collette. Although Oh remains active in feature films, the critically acclaimed Grey's Anatomy remains her primary current occupation.

Oh was host of the 28th Genie Awards on March 3, 2008.

Personal life

Oh and Sideways filmmaker Alexander Payne, were in a relationship for five years, including two years of marriage; they married on January 1, 2003. Payne and Oh separated in early 2005 and divorced in late 2006. ^{Oh is currently dating musician Andrew Featherston.}

Oh's brother, Ray, is completing a Ph.D. in medical genetics at the University of Toronto and Ontario Cancer Institute. Her sister Grace is a crown attorney and mother of two children in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Filmography

Features

• Double Happiness (1994)
• Bean (1997)
• Bad Day on the Block (1997)
• Last Night (1998)
• The Red Violin (1998)
• Permanent Midnight (1998)
• Guinevere (1999)
• Waking the Dead (2000 )
• Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000)
• The Princess Diaries (2001)
• The Frank Truth (2001) (documentary)
• Big Fat Liar (2002)
• Full Frontal (2002)
• Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity (2002)
• Rick (2003)
• Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
• Wilby Wonderful (2004)
• Sideways (2004)
• Mulan II (2004)
• Hard Candy (2005)
• Break a Leg (2005)
• Cake (2005)
• 3 Needles (2005)
• Sorry, Haters (2005)
• The Night Listener (2006)
• For Your Consideration (2006)
• The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends (2007)
• Blindness (2008)

Short subjects

• The Journey Home (1989)
• Prey (1995)
• Cowgirl (1996)
• Three Lives of Kate (2000) (narrator)
• Barrier Device (2002)
• 8 Minutes to Love (2004)
• Falling (2007)

Television

• Denim Blues (1989) (canceled after one season)
• Degrassi High: School's Out (1992)
• The Diary of Evelyn Lau (1993)
• Cagney & Lacey: The View Through the Glass Ceiling (1995)
• Arli$$ (1996–2002)
• Popular (2000)
• Date Squad (2001)
• Six Feet Under (2001) in Episode 01x05 An Open Book
• Tales of the City (2001) (miniseries)
• Grey's Anatomy (2005–present)
• American Dragon: Jake Long as Sun Park
• Sesame Street (2008) as herself.

References

1. Goldberg, Nathaniel (27 April 2005). "People's 50 Most Beautiful People", People Magazine. Retrieved on 31 May 2007. 
2. "Sandra Oh Biography". Film Reference. Retrieved on 2007-05-31.
3. "The Winding Career of Sandra Oh". NPR (23 Nov 2004). Retrieved on 2007-05-31.
4. ^ "Sandra Oh on the Challenge of Being Korean in Hollywood", The Chosun Ilbo (13 April 2007). Retrieved on 31 May 2007. 
5. ^ Posner, Michael (12 May 2007). "Sandra Oh's Doing Just Fine: Profile", Toronto Globe and Mail, pp. R6-R7. Retrieved on 30 May 2007. 
6. "Awards Ceremony Host biography". 
7. Lee, Ken; Stephen M. Silverman (27 Dec 2006). "Sandra Oh's Marriage Is Officially Over", People Magazine. Retrieved on 31 May 2007. 
8. Glock, Allison (2007). "Sandra Oh Talks Life, Family, and Grey's Anatomy", Marie Claire. Retrieved on 31 May 2007. 
9. TMZ Photo Galleries. "Celebs Swappin' Spit". TMZ. Retrieved on 2007-08-04.